Oyatsupan: shokupan and curry pan in Beaverton

For a lot of people in Portland, Beaverton is a maybe, but locals have been telling each other to make the drive to Oyatsupan for years, and one katsu kare pan settles it. It's a Japanese bakery that Hiroyuki Horie opened in May 2016 at 16025 SW Regatta Lane after more than two decades at Pasco Shikishima in Japan, and that experience shows in what he sells, which is shokupan, curry bread, melon pan, anpan, Japanese cheesecake, and egg salad on milk bread, most of which you can't get on Hawthorne.

The shop is clean and simple, with a big parking lot out front. Shokupan loaves are stacked on the shelves, and the curry donuts come out fried a deep gold. The blue jay on the shop's merchandise comes from its opening-day story, when a jay landed on the pickup counter with a cherry blossom in its beak. You can sit down with a drink or take your bag and go.

Check the hours before you drive out. Oyatsupan is open 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. every day, and online pickup starts later than walk-in. The curry donuts are fried in batches through the day, and the shokupan is an overnight ferment made with yeast they culture from raisins. If you get there at 3:10 there won't be much left, so aim for opening or late morning, especially on weekends, which is the same thing everyone who writes about the place tells you.

Start with curry pan, and in particular the katsu kare pan if they have it, a bread boat of house beef curry under a panko pork cutlet. The curry donut is stuffed with the same Japanese-style beef curry and fried, and it's a natural one to split in the parking lot. Then buy a loaf of shokupan, thin slice or thick, kaku or yama. It's milk bread with a real ferment, nothing like a grocery pullman, and it's what makes the egg salad sandwich work, which makes an easy lunch. For something sweet, the castella doughnuts and Japanese cheesecake are light and jiggly, melon pan is a soft bun with a sugar crust, and anpan is filled with sweet adzuki, and salt bread, chocolate coronets and seasonal cream doughnuts have turned up too. One curry item, a loaf and one sweet make a well-balanced bag.

Hiro talks about baking as subtraction, fewer ingredients and more attention, and you can taste that most in the bread, so don't skip the loaf just because the fried things look more exciting. The shop is nut-free, which doesn't make it gluten-free. They do online pickup, and their cake order forms ask for lead time. Regatta Lane is a real drive from Portland, so make Oyatsupan the main stop and plan the rest of the westside around it, and if the katsu kare pan is gone, get the curry donut and a loaf.

More on the bakery: Oyatsupan Bakers